


Precious Few

by sasha_b



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Kink Meme, M/M, oh Erik, oh charles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 16:29:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1717178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_b/pseuds/sasha_b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After so many wasted years fighting, Erik gets his precious few moments.</p><p>SPOILERS FOR DOFP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Precious Few

**Author's Note:**

> For the LJ Kink Meme.

Logan is asleep.

Hank is piloting the plane, and Erik suddenly has a bright idea.  He picks up the chess board, and carrying it to where Charles is sat, plunks it down and

“Fancy a game?”

Erik watches as Charles takes a sip of his scotch.

“I’m not in the mood for games, thank you.”

Charles looks bad.  He looks white and tired and the bags under his eyes are the size of craters.  Erik sips his own drink – Jesus, has it been ten years? – and watches the other man, who’d been staring at him earlier when they’d first started talking. Arguing.  When Erik had almost crashed the plane.

He swallows and closes his eyes.   _You abandoned me._

He abandoned Charles?  Had Charles come to see him in the prison? Had Charles even made an attempt to figure things out?  Had Charles actually _believed_ that Erik had killed the president? Had he hidden away all this time, using whatever mind numbing thing he could get his hands on?

Had they ever been together, really?

Erik sighs as Charles finally looks at him.

“I am sorry, Charles.  I truly am.”

Charles cuts him off, running a hand through the lank hair, leaning forward, and looking at the board.  Erik doesn’t comment on the shine in his eyes. The huge eyes he’s had in his mind for ten years – the ten years since he left that beach.

They play in silence, and Erik relaxes (with some help from the drink) and even though Charles has no power and is different, so different than he was, Erik finds himself gradually wondering how in the hell he could imagine life away from this man and their –

Charles is looking at him.

“Your move, Erik.”

It might be the particular way the other man says it, or the inflection in his voice that makes the ‘k’ in Erik’s name a hard sound, but Erik’s leaning over the board, the borrowed shirt that smells like Charles and musk gaping at his throat, and with one hand takes Charles’ hair in his fingers and kisses him, dry lips and all, something he’s imagined for a whole decade and Charles jumps but his eyes close – Erik watches to make sure – and the sound that comes from him –

Erik will remember it forever.

*

They walk alone outside in the rain, the satellite dish a hulking monster in the distance.  Tomorrow is the day things will change forever, but for now – it’s just him, and Charles, and the mansion where the innocent mutants they’re going to protect sleep, or try to, before the world tries to destroy or save them.

“I still cannot believe you pushed Sean like that.”

“You would have, too.”

Erik laughs too brightly when Charles rolls his eyes.  They’re both uncomfortable and worried and Charles radiates fear and excitement so loudly Erik doesn’t have to be a telepath to realize it.  Erik feels stiff and weird and he feels too easily impulsive and the ornate iron bench they pass crumples as he gets within five feet of it.

Charles makes an annoyed sound and turns to him.  “Erik, really?” His voice is high pitched and exasperated and Erik shrugs and purses his lips into a thin white line. “Really,” he says, and cocks an eyebrow, waving his left hand just a bit.

“For goodness’ sake, Erik, you don’t have to show off!”  Charles shouts and stands at the foot of the now basketball sized ball of scrap metal. “These are expensive, you know.” He squats in his sweats, the grey darkening with the rain, and puts his hands on the ball, attempting to pull it apart.

“Charles – it’s just a bench. And we may not _be_ coming back here tomorrow, so it really doesn’t matter, does it?”

_I won’t be coming back here. I know what I need to do._

_No matter that I don’t want to leave him_.

Erik’s got his directive and he’s going to follow it.  No matter what Charles has tried to impart to him.

The other man turns to him, his cheeks blotchy high up under his eyes and the tiny freckles on his nose stand out in stark relief against his colorless skin.  He takes a few steps toward Erik and rests his hands on his hips, although he _feels_ anything but casual to Erik.

“You won’t be coming back?”

“Stop doing that!”

“You projected it.  Erik,” Charles stops, and looks down, and then back up. His blue eyes are wide and hurt and Erik, despite knowing what he most likely will have to do tomorrow, suddenly doesn’t _want_ to have to.

He’s spent his whole life since the death of his family alone.  Single mind, single purpose. And now, standing in the misty, annoying rain with this man, he realizes that everything Charles has been saying to him is true, he’s _not alone_.  Yet he can’t reconcile that with everything he’s worked for.  Everything that will be brought to a head in the morning.

He closes his eyes and spreads his fingers and concentrates.

With a horrible long shriek, the bench is righted.

Although it’s not quite as pretty as it was. Charles looks at the bench, then looks at Erik, then looks at the bench again.  He shakes his head and sighs.  Approaching Erik, he puts out a hand and touches Erik’s face with his palm.  The rain has dampened them both, but at that moment, Erik could stay in it for the rest of his life, with Charles and that single touch on his skin.

*

“If you let them take me, I’m as good as dead.”

“I know.”

“Goodbye, old friend.”

“Goodbye, Erik.”

That hard ‘k.’ Erik’s spine shudders slightly when Charles says his name; he knows it might be the last time he hears it – for a long time, or forever.

He stares at the other man; without the helmet, Charles could do anything to him that he wanted.  Erik’s tired.  He doesn’t want the helmet right this moment.  Right this moment, he just wants to see Charles.

All Charles does is say _I’m sorry, too, my friend._

_Erik._

It’s too much, as Charles could never not project his feelings with his words (Erik wants to run to him; he’s not sure if that’s his own feelings or Charles’) and yet Erik wants that voice forever inside his head; he gives in for just a moment, and opens up – he waits – he’d be willing to trade this for whatever comes.  He _would_ be, and that’s the truth. Charles doesn’t speak, but Erik can feel everything he’s not saying, and after the longest moment of Erik’s life so far, he opens his eyes.

He rises with a gesture and is gone before Charles’ face and his everything convinces Erik to stay.

*

Magneto peppers the doorway with pieces of the exploded X-Jet; he knows it’s imperative to protect the children inside, as Logan needs more time.  Charles had said so, and Magneto believes him.  Storm is gone and most of the others are too and he takes a step backward and the girl called Blink opens a portal for him and he’s inside, with the ones left, knowing they have precious few seconds.

He’s bleeding from the piece of shrapnel that had caught him; he can’t believe he let something slip past his control. He’d laugh if it weren’t so damn sad.  And then he does laugh; it’s metal, after all, that takes him down.  Not Charles, not other mutants, not some idiot government agent, not a sentinel, not Mystique.

He does miss her.

He sits next to Charles as the sounds outside grow louder.  Charles looks at him, and knows immediately what’s happened.

He tells Charles what he wishes.

The other man takes his outstretched hand, and they lock eyes, and despite the (most likely) futility of this operation, Magneto – Erik, just Erik – realizes he does have a moment back. This one, with Charles at the end, and they’re together and they _tried_ and that’s what he’s wanted all along.  No matter the years spent fighting – even this trip had been slightly strained – but now –

Charles squeezes his hand and they watch each other, both smiling even as the door behind them is being torn apart.

_You’re not alone. Erik, you’re not alone._

Erik grips Charles’ hand as the sentinels burst through the iron door.

_Never again._

*

He stands on the balcony of the nondescript hotel they’re staying in for the night.  Logan and Charles had argued about trying to find Mystique (or Raven, as Charles keeps calling her) right away, but in the end they’d opted for waiting for the actual Peace Accord to start.  That way they’d be sure to find her without having to waste time hunting her down.

Since Charles has no powers.

Erik leans over the edge of the railing and watches the street.  He could probably find Mystique if he had to desperately – she can find him too. He twists his mouth and takes another sip of the scotch he holds in his hand and wonders how in the hell he’s gotten himself into another predicament of helping Charles with something instead of doing what he knows needs doing.

But there’s no Shaw this time, there’s only Mystique to stop, and he feels a tad guilty about that considering how she’d been left to fend for herself when he’d been incarcerated.

A knock at his door and he opens it with a gesture, remaining at the railing.

“We need to be there before she arrives, Erik.”

Charles stands next to him, his long hair (that is odd enough to make Erik want to laugh) shoved back from his expressive face; Erik shuffles just slightly so he’s not close enough to Charles to be able to smell his familiar – fuck it’s been a long time – smell and instead clasps his hands together, having finished his drink, and leans over to look at the street.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been here.”

Charles looks at him.  “Me as well.”

“My parents had friends that lived here. We visited before the war.”

Charles doesn’t answer him, but Erik can see that his throat bobs up and down.  “Before the war separated us, and killed them, I mean.” He says it matter-of-factly; his parent’s deaths had been what had formed him into what he is. He will always keep them and that gripped tightly in his hand, remembering, never letting it go. No matter that Shaw is long gone and he’s more powerful than he could have possibly imagined he’d be. He narrows his eyelids and the lamp in the room behind them snaps on and off, easily.  He could lift them off this balcony and use it like a flying carpet, if he so chose.  He could fly himself and Charles through the streets of Paris and he could find Mystique and take her before any of the idiot so called diplomats even got here and they could be gone together, he and Mystique, after a long time apart, her thoughts still along with his.

Or he could stay with Mystique _and_ Charles, and he could –

Charles shakes his head slightly, his hair sliding to hide his eyes.  “I’ve not forgotten anything, Erik.”

Erik cocks an eyebrow and turns to face him. The night is heavy with stars and the noise of traffic from the Champs Elysees, and he makes a sound he can’t quite describe, thick and mucousy and dull and full of things he’s tried to say – things he tried to say on the plane that Charles wouldn’t let him.

Erik understands loss.  Better than most.  But he doesn’t understand why Charles, who has one of the greatest gifts he’s ever run across, would willingly lose it to walk.

_I sacrificed my powers so I could sleep._

_Dry your eyes, Erik.  It doesn’t excuse what you’ve done._

_You’ve no idea what I’ve done._

He swallows and Charles meets his eyes.

“You didn’t sleep?”

“Not really, no.”

A thousand things pass between them, Charles and Erik, just them, briefly, and Erik thinks that Charles is a great fool for doing what he’s done – but the other man before him is not the man he’d been, the powerful man who’d do whatever it took to make others see the good side in everything.   _This_ man has seen too much and sacrificed too much and Erik doesn’t really know him at all.

Ten years is a long time.

He suddenly can’t bear the thought of Charles not being able to sleep, Charles not being able to walk or Charles being in so much pain he resorted to blotting out what made him _him_ in order to keep breathing.

Erik’s chest tightens, a vise like his own hand lifting the sub, bending the bullet, throwing the guard’s guns to the side, moving that satellite dish.

_That’s a beautiful memory, Erik._

_I didn't know I still had that._

He chokes on a well of emotion that he doesn’t want and turns to go inside.  He fully expects Charles to grab at his arm, to tell him _don’t worry, I am here with you, you don’t have to do this alone_ but he doesn’t, he can’t, and Erik turns back and meets Charles’ eyes – liquid, blue and yet bloodshot, familiar and ancient and in so much pain – he retreats to the hotel room, Charles slowly following him, finishing his drink and Erik breathes once, twice, and despite what they have to do tomorrow (again, for the second time, together), despite Erik’s rigid certainty he knows what to do and what’s right, he finds for just one moment he’s wishing they were back at the mansion, in the rain, next to the satellite dish.

He won’t give that up.

Despite what he’s done since then, despite Charles screaming at him on the plane, despite their differences now, despite Charles giving things up to be able to sleep.

Erik stops short and Charles walks into his back, not paying attention.  He makes to jerk away, but Erik, without thinking, flicks his left hand and Charles’ watch is stuck to Erik’s stomach, Charles’ arm around Erik’s middle.

After a moment, he feels Charles rest his head on his shoulder blade, and Erik thinks _you’ve no idea what I’ve done_ and realizes the truth of that statement. Not anymore.

_I sacrificed my powers so I could sleep._

_You abandoned me._

“I know,” Erik says out loud, but Charles doesn’t question him, and finally Erik turns and takes the other man into his arms silently, the war in his mind silenced, giving in, for a moment he needs more than he can say.

A moment he wants and he breathes in Charles and closes his eyes, snapping the light off in the room with a thought.

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: _One of my favorite moments was when future!Erik was lamenting wasting all those years fighting Charles and wanting a "precious few" of them back._
> 
>  
> 
> _So, what are those few and precious moments Erik wants/remembers, when he can just put the fight aside and not deprive himself of Charles._
> 
> Love to all who read!


End file.
